AT&T Says 4chan Block ‘In No Way Related to the Content’

AT&T said Monday that its weekend block of 4chan was due to an attack on one of its customers and not because of the popular site's content.

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4chan fans took to social-media outlets, including YouTube, to share information about the site's blocking by AT&T.

In a statement, the telecommunications provider said that a business customer, which it declined to name, was the target of a denial-of-service attack on Friday. The attack originated from IP addresses connected to 4chan, and to prevent it from spreading to other customers, AT&T blocked those addresses for its Internet-service subscribers.

"This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic," AT&T said. It removed the block late Sunday.

Its fans noticed the block over the weekend, and in a blog post, Mr. Poole, under the name "moot," asked affected users to contact customer support. An anonymous organizer started a campaign on the Point to boycott AT&T's Internet services.

The outcry didn't stop there, as recommendations for everything from contacting anti-censorship groups to planting false AT&T rumors (one about the death of its CEO popped up on CNN's iReport but has since been removed) circulated on Digg, Reddit and bulletin boards.

One of them, Project AT&T, added a note Monday after AT&T stopped blocking 4chan, saying "All rioting/'war'/protests have been suspended for the time being."

Monday afternoon, Mr. Poole blogged that 4chan has been under denial-of-service attacks for the past three weeks. "Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers," he wrote.

"In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so," he added. "We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship -- two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attention -- so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise."